Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

by Gordon Thomas

  The first contact was in Harry’s Bar in the rue Daunou. When Paul came in, Maurice was already sipping a cocktail. The Mossad katsa smoothly struck up a conversation, and the security man accepted a drink after Maurice mentioned that friends of his had stayed at the Ritz. Maurice added they had been surprised how many other guests had been wealthy Arabs.

  If it had been a shot in the dark, it produced a staggering result. Paul replied that many of the Arabs were rude and arrogant and expected him to jump when they raised a finger. Worst were the the Saudis. Maurice mentioned he had heard that Jewish guests were just as difficult. Paul would have none of it. He insisted that Jews were excellent guests.

  On that promising note, the evening ended with an arrangement to meet again in a few days, over dinner at a restaurant near the Ritz. During the meal Paul confirmed, under Maurice’s well-timed questions, much of what the katsa knew. The hotel security chief spoke of his passion for fast cars and his liking for piloting a small aircraft. But it was difficult to enjoy those habits on his salary.

  That may well have been the moment Maurice began to exert pressure. Finding money was always a problem for such hobbies, but not an insoluble one. Almost certainly that perked Paul’s interest.

  What followed then developed a rhythm of its own: Maurice laying down the bait and Paul all too eager to take it. The hook in place, Maurice would then have begun to reel in the line with the skills he had acquired at the Mossad training school.

  At some point Maurice would have planted the idea he might be able to help, perhaps mentioning he worked for a company that was forever looking for ways to update its database and would pay good money to those who could help do so. This was a favorite opening gambit for Mossad recruiters on a cold-approach operation. From there it would be a small step to tell Paul that many of the Ritz guests no doubt possessed the kind of information that would interest the company.

  Paul, perhaps uneasy at the turn of the conversation, may have balked. Maurice would have then moved to the next stage, saying that of course while he understood Paul’s reservations, they did come as a surprise to him. After all, it was common knowledge that Paul already took payment for information from the paparazzi. So why turn away the chance to make some real money?

  Looking back, Ari Ben-Menashe would judge the operation at this stage as developed along classic lines. “From my personal knowledge there is no one better than Maurice (his name for this one operation), at this. A cold-approach operation requires a real finesse. Move too quickly and the fish is off the hook. Take too long and suspicion is soon coupled with fear. Recruiting is an art all by itself and a European like Henri Paul is very different from hooking an Arab on the West Bank or Gaza Strip.”

  Maurice’s undoubted skill at delivering his proposition and accompanying revelations of how much he knew of Paul’s background would have been delivered with a combination of worldliness and persuasion, with the essential undertow of pressure. It would also have had an effect on Paul.

  Even if he had not asked, he may well have realized that the man seated across from him at the dinner table was an intelligence officer or at least a recruiter for a service.

  That may well be the reason for his response. According to an Israeli intelligence source who has a certain knowledge of the matter: “Henri Paul came straight out with it: Was he being asked to spy? If so, what was the deal? Just like that. No hedging or bullshit. Just what was the deal—and whom would he really be working for? That would have been the point when Maurice would have had to decide. Did he tell Paul he would be working for Mossad? There is no standard operational procedure for something like this. Every target is different. But Henri Paul was on the hook.”

  If so, Maurice may well have told Paul what would be required of him: obtaining information on guests, perhaps even bugging their suites, and noting whom they entertained. There would have been discussions about payment, accompanied by an offer to open an account in a Swiss bank or, if need be, to pay Paul in cash. Maurice would have given the impression that such matters were not a problem. At that point he may even have revealed that Paul would be working for Mossad. All this would be standard for the successful conclusion of a cold-approach operation.

  Paul was very probably scared at what he was asked to do. It was not a question of his loyalty to the Ritz; like other members of the staff, he worked for the hotel because of the relatively high salary and the perks. Paul was understandably frightened he was getting in over his head and could well end up in prison if he was found spying on the hotel’s guests.

  Yet if he went to the police what would they do? Maybe they already knew that he was going to be propositioned. If he turned down the proposition, what then? If the hotel management learned he had already betrayed that most precious of all assets the Ritz offered—confidentiality—by informing the paparazzi, he could be fired, even prosecuted.

  For Henri Paul in those last days of August 1997, there seemed no way out. He continued to drink, to take pills, to sleep restlessly, to bully junior staff. He was a man teetering close to the edge.

  Maurice maintained the pressure. He often managed to be in a bar where Paul was drinking off-duty. The katsa’s very presence could only have been a further reminder to the security chief of what he was being pressured to do. Maurice continued to visit the Ritz, sipping an aperitif in one of the hotel bars, lunching in its restaurant, taking afternoon coffee in a lounge. To Henri Paul it would have seemed as if Maurice had become a personal shadow. That would have only further increased the pressure on him, reminding him that there was no way out.

  Compounding the pressure was the forthcoming visit of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed. Paul had been put in charge of their security while they were in the hotel, with particular responsibility for keeping away the paparazzi. At the same time the photographers were calling him on his cell phone seeking information about the visit; he was being offered large sums of money to provide details. The temptation to accept was another pressure. Everywhere he turned, there seemed to be pressure.

  Though he managed to conceal it, Henri Paul was unraveling mentally. He was taking antidepressants, sleeping pills, and pep pills to get him through the day. This combination of drugs could only have furthered the strain on his ability to make reasoned judgments.

  Later, Ben-Menashe felt if he had been running the operation, “that would have been when I would have pulled out. Henri Paul might well have been able to conceal from most people his mental state, but to an experienced operative like Maurice, trained to a high degree in making such observations, the evidence of deterioration would have been all too obvious. Almost certainly, Maurice would have told the man in charge in Tel Aviv, Danny Yatom, he should pull the plug … let it go. But for reasons only Yatom knows, he did not. Yatom was barely a year in the hot seat. He wanted to make a name for himself. Vanity, like arrogance, is one of the great dangers in intelligence work. Yatom has plenty of both and that’s okay—except when it gets in the way of reality. And the reality was Mossad should have pulled out.”

  It did not. Yatom’s consuming need to have his own man inside the Ritz drove him. But other events that no one could have foreseen were moving to their own climax.

  The blinking light—signaling an incoming telephone call—which awoke Maurice was timed by the recorder at 1:58 A.M. on Sunday, August 31, 1997. The caller worked in the Paris gendarmerie accident unit and had been recruited by Mossad some years before; its computers classified him as a mabuah, a non-Jewish informer. On the totem pole of Maurice’s Parisian contacts, his caller was somewhere near the bottom.

  Nevertheless, the man’s news about a traffic accident stunned Maurice. It had occurred less than an hour before, when a Mercedes sedan had struck a reinforced concrete pillar on the westbound roadway of the underpass beneath the place de l’Alma, a notorious accident spot in the city.

  The dead were Diana, Princess of Wales, mother of the future king of England; Dodi Al-Fayed, son of Mohammed, the Egyptian-bo
rn owner of Harrods of Knightsbridge, the “Royal” store; and Henri Paul. The couple’s bodyguard had been critically injured.

  Hours after the accident Maurice flew back to Tel Aviv, leaving in his wake questions that would remain unanswered.

  What part had his pressure played in the accident? Had Henri Paul lost control of the Mercedes, causing it to smash into the thirteenth concrete pillar of the underpass beneath the place de l’Alma, because he could see no way of extricating himself from the clutches of Mossad? Was that pressure linked to the high level of prescribed drugs found in his bloodstream? When he had left the Ritz with his three passengers, had his mind continued to vacillate over what he should do about the pressure? Was he not only responsible for a terrible road accident but also the victim of a ruthless intelligence agency?

  Questions would continue to fester in the mind of Mohamed al-Fayed. In February 1998, he publicly announced: “It was no accident. I am convinced of that in my heart of hearts. The truth cannot remain hidden forever.”

  Five months later, the British network ITV, screened a documentary that claimed Henri Paul had close links to French intelligence. He had none. The program also hinted that an unnamed intelligence agency had been involved in the deaths; there were dark hints that the agency had acted because the British establishment feared Diana’s love for Dodi could have “political repercussions” because he was an Egyptian.

  To this day Mossad’s involvement with Henri Paul has remained a well-kept secret—the way the service had always intended it should remain. Mossad acted at the behest of no one outside Israel. Indeed, few outside the service still have any idea of Mossad’s part in the death of the then most famous woman in the world.

  Mohamed al-Fayed, prompted by what he saw as a campaign of villification in the English media, has continued to claim that unnamed security services had been ranged against his son and Diana. In July 1998 two Time magazine journalists published a book that included the suggestion that Henri Paul could have had some connection with French intelligence. Neither Al-Fayed or the journalists offered any conclusive proof that Henri Paul was an intelligence agent or even an informer—and none of them came near to identifying Mossad’s involvement with him.

  In July 1998, Mohamed al-Fayed asked a number of questions in a letter he sent to every one of Britain’s members of Parliament, urging them to raise the questions in the House of Commons. He claimed that “there is a force at work to stifle the answers I want.” His behavior was seen as the reaction of a grieving father lashing out in every direction. The questions deserve repeating, not because they shed any light on the role Mossad played in the closing weeks of Henri Paul’s life, but because they show how the entire tragedy has gained a momentum that only the true facts can stop.

  Al-Fayed wrote of a “plot” to get rid of Diana and his son and attempted to link all kinds of disparate events with his questions:

  “Why did it take one hour and forty minutes to get the princess to hospital? Why have some of the photographers failed to give up some of the pictures they shot? Why was there a break-in that night at the London home of a photographer who handles paparazzi pictures? Why have all the closed-circuit television cameras in that part of Paris produced not one frame of videotape? Why were the speed cameras on the route out of film, and the traffic cameras not switched on? Why was the scene of the crash not preserved but reopened to traffic after a few hours? Who was the person in the press group outside the Ritz who was equipped like a news photographer? Who were the two unidentified men mingling in the crowd who later sat in the Ritz bar? They ordered in English, watching and listening in a marked way?”

  Mossad had no interest in the relationship between Diana and Dodi. Their sole concern was to recruit Henri Paul as their informer in the Ritz. Regarding the mysterious news photographer: in the past Mossad has allowed its agents to pose as journalists. It may well have been Maurice keeping watch outside the hotel. The two unidentified men in the hotel bar may have had some connection to Mossad. It would no doubt comfort Mohamed al-Fayed if that were true.

  By 1999, Mohamed al-Fayed’s belief in a “plot” had hardened to what he saw as “a full-blown criminal conspiracy.” He insisted it had been manufactured by MI5 and MI6, and French intelligence with Mossad “manipulating in the background.” To those who would listen, and they were steadily declining in number, he would name a London newspaper editor as well as a close friend of Diana as both having “direct links” to Britain’s intelligence services.

  The reasons why these services had become involved in the “conspiracy” was clear-cut in Mohammed’s mind. “A decision had been made by the Establishment, and at the very top, that Diana must not be allowed to marry a Muslim. Then the future king of England, Prince William, would have an Arab as his stepfather and another as his grandfather. There was also a real fear that I would provide the money to allow Diana to become a rival to the Queen of England. The Establishment would do anything to end my son’s relationship with the one woman he had ever truly loved.”

  Facts were never produced to support an allegation which, if proven, would surely accelerate the end of the Royal Family in Britain and perhaps pave the way to a crisis of confidence that could even sweep away a government.

  Nevertheless, al-Fayed authorized his spokesman, Laurie Meyer, a former anchorman with one of Rupert Murdoch’s television networks, to state to the media: “Mohammed firmly believes Di and Dodi were murdered by agents loyal to the British Crown and that other agencies were deeply involved in the crime. He further believes there is deep-seated racism within the Establishment.”

  To confirm that murder most foul had taken place, al-Fayed had employed the skills of a former senior Scotland Yard detective, John MacNamara. By early 1999 the soft-spoken investigator was scouring the world for evidence. Along the way, in Geneva, Switzerland, he met a former MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, who claimed he had seen documents at MI6 headquarters on the bank of the River Thames. Tomlinson insisted they described “a plan to murder the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic—a plan that has unsettling parallels to the way Di and Dodi died. The MI6 document stated that the ‘accident’ should happen in a tunnel where the chance of fatal injury is high. The weapon of choice the document recommended was a high-powered laser beam that could be used to temporarily blind the driver of the target vehicle.”

  Despite all his efforts, MacNamara has been unable to find any independent evidence to support Tomlinson’s claims—and efforts to obtain the MI6 document totally failed.

  Then came news, reluctantly confirmed, that the United States National Security Agency, NSA, had some 1,050 pages of documents on the couple. Al-Fayed launched an immediate court battle in Washington to obtain the documents.

  “The more he is blocked, the greater is his determination,” said the loyal Meyer. But, like others, he is not holding his breath. “It could take years to work its way through the system.”

  Part of the reason, I had discovered, was that Diana and Dodi had been under surveillance by ECHELON, one of NSA’s most sensitive and ultra-secret surveillance systems. This global electronic network is of truly astounding proportions. It links satellites to a series of high-speed parallel computers. The system enables NSA and those it allows to share information—Britain is one—to intercept and decode virtually every electronic communication in the world—in real time. Searching for key words it had been fed, ECHELON can identify and segregate messages of interest to its users.

  Following her divorce from Prince Charles, Diana had launched her campaign to abolish land mines. She was blunt, outspoken, and quickly gathered support that was not welcomed by the Clinton administration or in London and other European capitals. She was seen as a meddler, someone who did not understand what she was talking about.

  “The reality was that the land mine manufacturing industry provided thousands of jobs. No one wanted to see the mines used—but no one wanted people put out of work because Diana had a bee in her bonnet,” o
ne Washington source told me; perhaps understandably he insisted on not being named in return for this insight.

  The arrival of Dodi in Diana’s life automatically meant he became part of ECHELON’S collection activities. Unknown to them, their every conversation, however intimate, was silently gathered up by ECHELON’S satellites.

  By 1997, Mohamed al-Fayed’s name had also been added to the global computer search. ECHELON may well have been the first outside his family circle to know of his hope that his son would marry a princess of the line—and then later his claim that on the eve of their deaths he had planned to announce their engagement.

  There is much in the NSA documents that may still cause further surprise—and provide proof, through Diana’s own words, that she had indeed planned to marry her lover.

  I only became aware of ECHELON’s role shortly before publication of the original edition of this book in March 1999. It was then that I also became aware of just how far the deaths of his son and Diana had continued to consume Mohamed al-Fayed. It was a jolting experience to be exposed to such uncontrolled grief and his anger and belief in a conspiracy that fed it.

  On a March afternoon I met Mohamed al-Fayed in the privacy of his private salon on the fifth floor of Harrods. Guarding its approaches were his personal bodyguards. Al-Fayed told me they “are all former SAS soldiers, totally loyal to me. I pay them well. They make sure I live. I have been threatened so many times. My car is bulletproof.”

  These revelations, delivered in a tense low voice, came as he entered the salon. I was not sure whether I should take his outburst as a warning or a reassurance I was safe to tell him anything he wanted to know.